Current methods for the creation and playback of recording-industry music are fixed and static. Each time an artist's composition is played back, it sounds essentially identical.
Since Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph, much effort has been expended on improving the exactness of “static” recordings. Examples of static music in use today include the playback of music on records, analog and digital tapes, compact discs, DVD's and MP3. Common to all these approaches is that on playback, the listener is exposed to the same audio experience every time the composition is played.
A significant disadvantage of static music is that listeners strongly prefer the freshness of live performances. Static music falls significantly short compared with the experience of a live performance.
Another disadvantage of static music is that compositions often lose their emotional resonance and psychological freshness after being heard a certain number of times. The listener ultimately loses interest in the composition and eventually tries to avoid it, until a sufficient time has passed for it to again become psychologically interesting. To some listeners, continued exposure, could be considered to be offensive and a form of brainwashing. The number of times that a composition maintains its psychological freshness depends on the individual listener and the complexity of the composition. Generally, the greater the complexity of the composition, the longer it maintains its psychological freshness.
Another disadvantage of static music is that an artist's composition is limited to a single fixed and unchanging version. The artist is unable to incorporate spontaneous creative effects associated with live performances into their static compositions. This imposes is a significant limitation on the creativity of the artist compared with live music.
And finally, “variety is the spice of life”. Nature such as sky, light, sounds, trees and flowers are continually changing through out the day and from day to day. Fundamentally, humans are not intended to hear the same identical thing again and again.
The following is a discussion of the prior art that have employed techniques to reduce the repetitiveness of music instruments, sound and sound effects.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,073 by Masaki describes a method for randomly selecting the playing order of the songs on one or more storage disks. The disadvantage of this invention is that it is limited to the order that songs are played. When a song is played it always sounds the same.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,350,880 by Sato describes a demo mode (for a keyboard instrument) using a fixed sequence of “n” static versions. Each of the “n” versions are different from each other, but each individual version sounds exactly the same each time it is played and the “n” versions are always played in the same order. Hence, the complete sequence of the “n” versions always sounds the same and this same sequence is repeated again and again (looped-on), until the listener switches the demo “off”. Basically, Sato has only increased the length of an unchanging, fixed sequence by “n”, which is somewhat useful when looping. But, the listener is exposed to the same sound sequence (now “n” times longer) every time the demo is played and looped. Additional limitations include: 1) Unable to playback one version per play. 2) Does not end on it's own since user action is required to stop the looping. 3) Limited to a sequence of synthetically generated tones.
Another group of prior art deals with dynamically changing music in response to events and actions during interactive computer/video games. Examples are U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,057 by Land and U.S. Pat. No. 6,153,821 by Fay. A major objective here is to coordinate different music to different game conditions and user actions. Using user actions to provide a real-time stimulus in-order to change the music played is a desirable feature for an interactive game. Some disadvantages of this invention are: 1) It's not automatic since it requires user actions. 2) Requires real-time stimulus based on user actions and game conditions to generate the music 3) The variability is determined by the game conditions and user actions rather than by the artists definition of playback variability 4) The sound is generated by synthetic methods which are significantly inferior to humanly created musical compositions.
Another group of prior art deals with the creation and synthesis of music compositions automatically by computer or computer algorithm. An example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,496,962 by Meier, et al. A very significant disadvantage of this type approach is the reliance on a computer or algorithm that is somehow infused with the creative, emotional and psychological understanding equivalent to that of recording artists. A second disadvantage is that the artist has been removed from the process, without ultimate control over the creation that the listener experiences. Additional disadvantages include the use of synthetic means and the lack of artist participation and experimentation during the creation process.
Tsutsumi U.S. Pat. No. 6,410,837 discloses a remix apparatus/method (for keyboard type instrument) capable of generating new musical tone pattern data. It's not automatic, as it requires a significant amount of manual selection by the user. For each set of user selections only one fixed version is generated. This invention slices up a music composition into pieces (based on a template that the user manually selects), and then re-orders the sliced up pieces based on another template the user selects. Chopping up a musical piece and then re-ordering it, will not provide a sufficiently pleasing result for sophisticated compositions. The limitations of Tsutsumi include: 1) It's not automatic. Requires a significant amount of user manual selection via control knobs 2) For each set of user selections only one fixed version is generated 3) Uses a simple re-ordering of segments that are sliced up from a single user selected source piece of music 4) Limited to simple concatenation. One segment follows another 5) No mixing of multiple tracks.
Kawaguchi U.S. Pat. No. 6,281,421 discloses a remix apparatus/method (for keyboard type instrument) capable of generating new musical tone pattern data. It's not automatic as it requires a significant amount of manual selection by the user. Some aspects of this invention use random selection to generate a varying playback, but these are limited to randomly selecting among the sliced segments of the original that have a defined length. The approach is similar to slicing up a composition into pieces, and then re-ordering the sliced up pieces randomly or partially randomly. This will not provide a sufficiently pleasing result with recording industry compositions. The amount of randomness is too large and the artist does not have enough control over the playback variability. The limitations of Kawaguchi include: 1) It's not automatic. Requires a significant amount of user manual selection via control knobs 2) Uses a simple re-ordering of segments that are sliced up from a single user selected source piece of music 3) Limited to simple concatenation. One segment follows another 4) No mixing of multiple tracks.
Severson U.S. Pat. No. 6,230,140 describes method/apparatus for generating continuous sound effects. The sound segments are played back, one after another to form a long and continuous sound effect. Segments may be played back in random, statistical or logical order. Segments are defined so that the beginning of possible following segments will match with the ending of all possible previous segments. Some disadvantages of this invention include: 1) Due to excessive unpredictability in the selection of groups, artists have incomplete control of the playback timeline 2) A simple concatenation is used, one segment follows another segment 3) Concatenation only occurs at/near segment boundaries 4) There is no mechanism to position and overlay segments finely in time 5) No provision for the synchronization and mixing of multiple tracks. 6) No provision for multiple channels 7) No provision for inter-channel dependency or complimentary effects between channels 8) The concatenation result may vary with task complexity, processor speed, processor multi-tasking, etc 9) A sequence of the type instructions disclosed will not be compatible with multiple compositions 10) The user must take action to stop the sound from continuing indefinitely (continuously).
All of this prior art has significant disadvantages and limitations, largely because these inventions were not directed toward the creation and playback of artist-defined variable playback compositions.